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Editorial: Refuge Renaming Fitting

Although Dale Bumpers disarmingly wrote about himself as “The Best Lawyer in a One-Lawyer Town,” there’s no one around here who doubts the substantial impact former Arkansas governor and senator made on his home state.

That’s why it’s fitting that on Friday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refuge on the White River in southeastern Arkansas was renamed the Dale Bumpers White River National Wildlife Refuge.

Sen. Bumpers, a Charleston native, was born Aug. 12, 1925. He became the 38th governor of Arkansas, serving four years, and served 24 years in the U.S. Senate.

He grew up during the Great Depression doing whatever he could to make money: picking cotton and peas, working in a cannery, delivering newspapers, driving a hearse and butchering for a grocery store, according to the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture.

He served three years in the Marines toward the end of World War II and graduated from the University of Arkansas with a political science degree. He obtained a law degree from Northwestern University at Evanston, Ill.

His early legal career was distinguished by his recommendation that the Charleston School Board comply with the Supreme Court decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. As a result of this recommendations, Charleston began the 1954 school year with 11 black children enrolled, making it the first school district in the 11 states of the former Confederacy to integrate schools following the ruling, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas entry on Sen. Bumpers.

The White River Refuge is not the first entity to be named in honor of this favorite son.

The Dale Bumpers College of Agriculture, Food and Life Sciences honors Sen. Bumpers’ service on the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee. The university’s website notes he brought Arkansas agriculture into national and international prominence and secured $80 million in funds for facilities and programs that benefited the state. Notably, he brought home funding for the John W. Tyson Building of the Center of Excellence for Poultry Science, the interstate Food Safety Consortium, and the National Center for Agricultural Law Research and Information.

Because of the commitment of both the senator and his wife to seeing all children immunized, the National Institutes of Health named the Dale and Betty Bumpers Vaccine Research Center in their honor.

While in the Senate, Dale Bumpers facilitated an innovative land swap that exchanged Idaho timberland for bottomland forests and wetlands in Arkansas, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service website. The swap added 41,000 acres to the White River and the Cache River National Wildlife refuges.

As governor, according to the site, he stopped the channelization of 232 miles of the Cache River and its tributary, Bayou DeView.

The White River refuge was established in 1935 for the protection of migratory birds. It is one of the largest remaining bottomland hardwood forests left in the Mississippi River valley.

Speaking about the renaming, David Houghton, president of the National Wildlife Refuge Association, said: “I can’t think of a more fitting tribute to one of the Refuge System’s greatest supporters than naming the White River National Wildlife Refuge after Senator Dale Bumpers. Bumpers is a living legend who played a pivotal role in creating the 80-mile corridor connecting the Cache River and White River refuges. People and wildlife have him to thank for this lasting conservation legacy.”

We agree the area is fittingly named for the public servant from Charleston. And we think it just might be worth a road trip to see the Dale Bumpers White River refuge.